What Reality Shows
by ncfan
Summary: Mary could not deny it anymore.


I will do my best to do the quality of Jane Austen's writing credit so this doesn't come off as a complete farce. I own nothing, and especially not _Pride __and __Prejudice._

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><p>Every family had one, be they kings or paupers. This particular member could be found in any family, lurking in the corners, unsociable, grasps for attention met with no recognition at all. They had many names: the dull mouse, the quiet one, the homebody.<p>

Mary Bennet preferred 'ignored.' 'Universally ignored', to be more specific.

Mornings at Longbourne were accompanied by three manners of things. The first was warm sunlight if the skies above were not gray and threatening rain. The second was Mrs. Bennet's ceaseless chatter as she attempted, in vain, to impress upon Mr. Bennet the seriousness of the fact that they still had two daughters unmarried. The third was the technically sound but depressingly mechanical strains of Mary on the pianoforte, practicing intently.

There could be no errors in her work; Mary would not allow them. If she had to attend the interminable, unbearable balls, she would at least be sure that no fault could be found in her playing. Perhaps that way, Mary could find some praise to grace her ears.

The call for breakfast came and Mary found herself alone with Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. Kitty had claimed indisposition and remained sequestered in her chamber; Mary personally suspected that she was still sleeping after having stayed awake so late the night before.

Mrs. Bennet gesticulated wildly towards Mary when she sat down at the table, crying to her husband "My dear Kitty will surely make an advantageous marriage, but what is _Mary_ to do when you are in your grave?"

Mr. Bennet murmured "I have no doubt in your ability to see them both well-married, my dear; have no fear." His wife scoffed, but he merely responded with a lift of the brow and a turning of the newspaper page.

For herself, Mary bit her lip but said nothing. She had no desire to become involved in such discourse, and excused herself quietly as soon as she was finished.

-0-0-0-

Back in the chamber she had shared with Kitty ever since their other sisters had moved out, Mary found herself sitting in front of the mirror, silent. Kitty was indeed still sleeping, her curls all a mess about her face. She had muttered, indistinctly, for Mary to be quiet when she came in, and Mary was more than happy to oblige her.

The mirror was of a fine quality once; Mary was sure it must have been valuable when it was first bought. Now, however, the mirror used by Miss Mary Bennet and Miss Catherine Bennet was not nearly so fine as it had once been. It had several scratches and smudges that even constant cleaning could not entirely hide.

Even so, the mirrors showed a clear reflection, and Mary found herself today doing something she rarely did, contemplating at length what she saw in it.

Beneath her outward nature of stiff, awkward sanctimoniousness, Mary saw reality and truth all too clearly. If she had no other earthly skills at all, Mary Bennet was at least gifted with the ability of keen, discerning observation. She could see everything.

Though Mary loved her father dearly, love did not blind her to his shortcomings. His relationship to Mrs. Bennet was not one based on love, and Mary suspected that it never had been. Mr. Bennet had not married for love; Mary had no confirmation of this, but she had watched such a thing unfold before. Youth, prettiness and shallow charm could have a strong lure. Mr. Bennet had married his bride without ever truly knowing her, and soon discovered afterwards that beneath Mrs. Bennet's prettiness and glib charm, there was no substance. Mary had never seen her parents hold a sustained conversation that was not interjected with Mrs. Bennet's complaints on the behalf of her "poor nerves", nor without Mr. Bennet's caustic tongue.

Mr. Bennet had rushed headlong into marriage with a woman who he had discovered that he could never love, only be fond of in an exasperated way. On the same token, he was an all too lax, even indolent, father to his five girls.

Certainly, Mr. Bennet nowadays took greater caution in making certain that Kitty would not go the way of Lydia. That much credit could certainly be laid at his door. But it was his unwillingness to properly govern and discipline his girls that had led to Lydia's elopement in the first place. Had he laid down the morals of the home properly and warned his daughters of the dangers of such men—something Mrs. Bennet certainly could not be trusted to do—Lydia would never have eloped with Mr. Wickham in the first place, would never have come so close to bringing their family to ruin.

Mrs. Bennet was no better than her husband. She was constantly hurtful and inconsiderate without meaning to be, her ungoverned tongue and frivolous mind ruling her in the place of common sense. She made an embarrassment of her daughters whenever they were in public with her, endeavoring constantly to associate with those who were above her. In her attempts to secure advantageous marriages for her daughters, she drove suitors away with unrefined nature. The worst of it—at least in Mary's eyes—was that she genuinely believed that she was helping to save her daughters from ruin. Mrs. Bennet could never see the damage she did, for she believed that her efforts were helpful.

Lydia Wickham was an ungoverned, wild creature. There was little more that could be said of her, except that even if her hasty marriage to Wickham had saved her family from ruin, she herself still did the Bennet name little service with her silliness.

Kitty was little better, though, on an unusually optimistic note, Mary suspected that, removed from Lydia's influence and with Mr. Bennet finally taking action against her frivolity, she would improve over time. Mary was already starting to see improvements in her sister's character; Kitty was slightly less silly than usual lately and less inclined to gossip and stare endlessly after every handsome young man to cross her path.

Jane and Lizzy had been the best of them, truly the only good of them, and Mary…

Mary could conjure no excuse for herself.

Twisting a strand of fine, lank hair in her hands, Mary stared into the mirror. What she saw staring back at her was not something she had ever enjoyed looking at.

Mary avoided mirrors for the reason that what she saw when she looked at her sisters, any of her sisters, she could never divine within herself. Each of her sisters were beautiful in their own way, Jane with her fair gold curls and sweet, endearing manner, Lizzy with her fine eyes and cunning wit. Even Kitty and Lydia were handsome in their own way, vivacious and sparkling.

On the other hand, Mary knew that, compared to them, or any beauty of the world, she would always find herself wanting. Her dark hair was neither curling nor particularly thick. It most often hung limp about her shoulders or knotted into a bun. Her eyes were gray and, thanks to having very pale eyelashes, they seemed rather protuberant and unblinking—these eyes, Mary thought, not without frustration, were surely the most unattractive part of her. Perhaps with the right sort of skin Mary could have been passable, but her skin was merely pallid and pasty from whiling away her hours indoors, having only her books for company.

She was not pretty. Mary knew that she was not pretty, and would never try to pass herself off as such. She would not wear fashionable clothing in fine cloths and vibrant colors. Even the prettiest of dresses could not improve the features of a woman with no beauty; next to the striking cloth, she would only look even more plain. Instead, Mary wore the plainest, most sober clothes to be found in Meryton, so that she would not be thought to be attempting false beauty. Certainly, her severe gown paid her little service, but at least, Mary supposed, she could not be said to be endeavoring to conceal what she really was.

The pianoforte, then, could be said to be Mary's only advantage in society's view of what an eligible young debutante should be. Mary was always fond of the pianoforte and strove to become a great proficient, for it was the only way she would ever be what society called "accomplished."

Mary's hopes of that were shattered at the Netherfield ball. In retrospect, she knew she shouldn't have begun to sing. She had enough self-honesty to know that her singing voice was poor, but had not known what others thought of her playing until her father called her away from the pianoforte and Mary heard, for the first time, the unkind laughter all around.

In music, it seemed she would never be "accomplished." Mary unfurled her formerly clenched hands and stared at the bitten palms, the silence of the chamber growing more oppressive by the second. Mary, for all her efforts, would never produce tunes that pleased others, and it seemed she was outdone by her own sister Lizzy, who never devoted the hours she did to practicing, who never worried over every little note like she did. Lizzy had to her name what Mary never would: a natural talent for the pianoforte, talent that Lizzy could not even seem to appreciate.

Well, Lizzy had other gifts in plentiful enough numbers that Mary supposed she could afford to think little of a gift for music.

The third Bennet girl swallowed hard, barely even noticing as Kitty tossed in bed to find a more comfortable position. She had seen vanity everywhere, so thick on the ground, but everything, largely Lydia's elopement but not just simply that, had opened her eyes.

Vanity had been great, but the vanity had been hers. With the prospect of ruin hanging like a storm cloud over her head, Mary realized that for the entirety of her life, what she had been most concerned with was how others viewed her. Not just the Lord Almighty, but her family, her neighbors, her inferiors and her betters.

Mary had for a time entertained the thought that perhaps she and Mr. Collins would be wed. She could not say whether she was averse to the idea or if she welcomed it. She would have Longbourne, and in the event that Mr. Bennet died before his daughters were wed and left his wife to survive him, she could shelter them there; Mr. Collins could not simply allow his mother and sisters-in-law to be cast out to the cold.

At the time, Mary had been more than ever keenly aware that she had four sisters who were far prettier and more amiable than she, but she had still had the thought. Mr. Collins, after all, was a man of the cloth, even if he stumbled over his words and was, much in the manner of Mrs. Bennet, painfully unaware of how his behavior could potentially be considered offensive. Surely he noticed a woman's piety long before her beauty (or lack of it), and Mary was far and away the most pious of the Bennet sisters.

Mr. Collins disappointed her in that. His eyes were first drawn to Jane, who was easily the most beautiful of the sisters, and after that to Lizzy, her close second in this area. He never even saw Mary, and eventually went on to marry Charlotte Lucas, now Mrs. Collins. Mary greeted this with only small regret. She had never cherished any deep feeling for the clergyman. At best she had been fond of him, which was more than could be said for her sisters. She would have had Longbourne, but even Mary, who believed that a strong marriage had at its foundations respect rather than love, did not think she could have lived out her years as Mrs. Collins. Mary did take into account that he could have surprised her, but Mr. Collins was a rather predictable man.

Mr. Collins had never seen her, nor had anyone else.

Mary had adopted her at times sanctimonious, even pompous piety to impress her sisters and her mothers. What her constant moralizing had bought her was Jane and Lizzy's avoidance of her and Kitty and Lydia's mockery. Mrs. Bennet never noticed that her third child was a pious girl; all she could see was that Mary was plain, plain, plain indeed.

"_Mary, you ought to find better employment than to constantly read those sermons. It is beauty, not piety, that will find you a good husband."_

In the days of her childhood, Mary had looked after Jane and especially Lizzy as elder sisters whom she desperately wanted to be the friend of. When they took walks or went off to play it was all she could do not to insist upon accompanying them. Actually, she had when she was very young trailed their steps wherever they went, but as she grew older and Mary's gifts of observation developed and sharpened, she drew away to realize that Jane and Lizzy were each other's friend, not hers. They would always be closest to each other and would never have quite the same affection for Mary. There was no place for little Mary Bennet in the world of Jane and Elizabeth Bennet, and she withdrew upon realizing that.

Then, Mary refocused her attention on the two younger than her. Mary by now had come to accept that she would never be "the youngest of three" in a grouping of the Bennet sisters. However, that did not bar Mary from becoming "the oldest of three." Perhaps she could become a leader to Kitty and Lydia and guide them towards more sober, proper behavior.

That was not to be either. Lydia was willful and did not take kindly to instruction, especially not from her "dull and dour" sister Mary. Young Lydia had nothing but scorn for Mary and influenced the more easily led Kitty to the same. They either ignored or laughed at her attempts to govern them and eventually, Mary gave up altogether. They were the same as Jane and Lizzy—they formed a unit and had no room for Mary in their world.

Mary thought again and again that all Mrs. Bennet saw in her was her glaring lack of a pretty face. She could have been the most demure, the most graceful, the most accomplished young girl in the country and it would have mattered not to Mrs. Bennet, for Mary was not beautiful, nor even pretty. In the eyes of Mrs. Bennet, beauty was important above all else in getting a young girl a husband. Mary dismissed her mother from any grasp for approval long ago, but the thought that Mrs. Bennet thought her inadequate still served as a knife to wound the flesh.

Above all else, though, above Mrs. Bennet and all of her brood, Mary wanted the approval of her father.

Even being anything but blind to his faults, Mary adored her father. It was her duty as a daughter to esteem him, but even allowing for that, Mary held her father higher than any of her other family members. If Mary could have her father's esteem in return, she would be content.

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and it helped that Mary and Mr. Bennet were alike enough in their inclinations that for the former to imitate the latter was not a difficult thing. Mary had spent much of her life imitating her father.

Mr. Bennet was more often than not to be found in the company of his books, reading them over and again. Mary herself was interested in the knowledge of past and present. To that end, though she hated town as much as her father, whenever Mary came into possession of sufficient money, she would use that money to buy not clothing, ribbons or other frivolities, but books, much to the exasperation of Mrs. Bennet.

"_What on Earth do you need with Jonathan Swift? You ought to have bought a new gown for the ball tomorrow night!"_

Mary studied her books as diligently as she sought to improve her skills on the pianoforte. She absorbed every word, and though she did not always take away the meaning that the author of said book might have wished, she considered herself learned. Surely her father would be content with that.

The truth was shattering.

Mr. Bennet would ask her opinion and change the subject before Mary could gather a response. He saw her slowness to answer and took it for ignorance. He saw nothing of her intellect, and thought her to be as silly as Kitty and Lydia.

If Mrs. Bennet's views of her as inadequate were a knife taken to Mary's flesh, Mr. Bennet's opinion of her as inadequate was a knife taken directly to Mary's heart. The idea that she might never have his esteem, nor even his approval, was one that made her very sore indeed. For that reason, Mary tried ever harder to make herself seem learned and a young woman worthy of her father's respect.

Mary considered taking one of her books to thumb over familiar pages and draw some comfort from the words she knew so well, but did not rise. Kitty would complain of the noise made when the pages turned, and more to the point, Mary for once found no interest in delving deep into the works Jonathan Swift or John Milton or the pages of _The __Pilgrim__'__s __Progress_. She could not set her mind to it.

Perhaps, perhaps, Mary supposed, finally brave enough to explore at length her own vanity, she might have been content just to have their attention, in place of their esteem.

Mr. Bennet had never been afraid to treat with care Jane and Elizabeth, the latter especially. In the early days of his marriage, he had told himself that the male heir who would inherit Longbourne and thus shelter his sisters when Mr. Bennet was gone was surely waiting in the wings. In the meantime, he saw no harm in focusing his attentions of Jane and Elizabeth, the latter of whom was clearly his favorite daughter.

When Mary, a young child, had watched Mr. Bennet with his two eldest, she wondered why he never behaved in such a manner around her, why he seemed to keep his distance from her and Kitty and Lydia. She wondered why he smiled fondly on Jane and kept confidence with Lizzy, when he rarely spoke to her.

Mary had envied them both so much, and, though she only did so with the utmost reluctance, she realized that she still did. Envy was a deadly sin, one that would surely lead her down the path to ruin, but it was there. Mary envied Jane and especially Lizzy for having what she feared she never would—an affectionate relationship with her father based on mutual respect.

Though she could not now fathom taking any joy in the extended attention of her mother, there was once a time when Mary longed for Mrs. Bennet's eye to be on her as much as any child felt for their mother. Mrs. Bennet, however, was too busy introducing Jane and Lydia to any eligible young man they met. She had no time for her plain, sober third daughter.

None of her sisters really had time for Mary either. They were too involved in their own schemes, Jane with Elizabeth and Lydia with Kitty. Mary did not fit anywhere into that pattern, and found herself fading into the background whenever they were altogether.

Mary knew that her family did not hate her. Her gifts of observation were keen enough that Mary liked to believe that if her family did harbor any great loathing for her, she would have been able to discern it by now. They did not hate her. If anything, they loved her in their way, but simply did not know what to do with her. No one knew what to do with Mary, bookish, somber, lost in her own world Mary.

With a rustle of coarse gray skirt folds, Mary drew to her feet, and looked to the bed where Kitty lay.

"Can you spare some room, Kitty?" she asked quietly, pressing her hands down on the mattress.

Kitty muttered something mutinous, but obliged, wriggling over to one end of the bed so that Mary had enough room to lie comfortably on her back, on the side of the bed closest to the window. She tilted her head towards that window and stared out at the stretch of sky it sported, clear and blue.

Mary had always aspired for the esteem of others, but had not behaved in such a way as to earn esteem. Beneath that, she had wanted more than anything for her family to pay attention to her, but she had not been willing to behave in a manner that would make interactions with her pleasant.

She could tell herself that she could not help it. Mary was not by nature articulate and quick of tongue. Her slowness to answer questions was not an indication of dullness or ignorance; she needed those moments to sufficiently gather her thoughts to speak intelligently. Having gone so long without company, Mary lived primarily within the confines of her own mind and conversing easily with another was all but impossible for her. She knew that those balls she hated so much to attend were one of the only ways for her to meet a man who could keep her in comfort for her days, but Mary still dreaded being put before so many people at once, still dreaded the prospect of conversing with strangers. Her self-righteous piety and morality was a buffer against those who would judge her for her plain face and never bother to try to know her beyond her reputation as the least fair Miss Bennet.

She could tell herself that it was not her fault, that she could not help it, and it was true, in certain ways. But Mary could not deny the reality of her own situation, that she had fallen into a trap she had made for herself. If she was viewed as sanctimonious, as pompous, as shallow, as _silly_, it was because she had presented herself as such.

And perhaps, had Mary made more of an effort to be a person truly worthy of admiration, she would not have been lost in the background like she was.


End file.
